The current theory that a mars sized object hit the earth and carved out the moon makes no sense and defies the laws of physics.

I have played with computer gravity simulators and understand how objects behave so I know this is impossible. Any particles that are blown off the earth will 100% either fly out of earth's orbit or crash back into the earth. There is no middle ground where the particles can start orbiting the earth. The reason this is, because of the direction of the objects jettisoning into space. Quite frankly I am shocked that this theory is still accepted.

Is there a better theory available?

On the simulator, I have tried to launch "moons" into orbit of "planets". I simulated this by having two spheres, one with high mass and one with low mass, starting off attached and the lighter one launching away. The problem was that the lighter object cannot change its direction midflight so would always either fly away or be pulled back down to the surface.

It is impossible to eject particles into orbit from the surface of a planet unless you can change the velocity of particles midflight. I doubt this is possible.

god made tha moon so tha sun wouldnt be lonely duh

it doesn't defied the law of physics.

when particles/debris, in its inertia frame, blown off from earth and accelerating, it would eventually reached a point of equilibrium that the centripetal force can pull it in uniform circular motion.

for instance, if you throw a golf ball really hard into the ocean, it pentrates and accelerates until the force applied by the water neutralizes the golf ball's acceleration.

likewise, in space, the effect of the gravitational pull from the sun and the pull from the earth's gravity can slowed down and stabilized the velocity of any particles/debris in mid-flight.

because of the stability in this region, we called it the Lagrange point 4 & 5 due to the equilibrium of gravitational pull between two objects (earth & sun), and LP 4 & 5 are outside the Roche limit, allowed earth's debris to coalesce -- a process that allows material to condense and fused into larger material, such in case of the debris, combined to form the moon. anywhere inside and within the the Roche limit, materials will disintegrate and not form the moon, but instead it forms a ring of debris, like saturn's ring.

certainly, those debris that are too close to the earth's atmosphere will be pull back down by the earth's center of gravity, and those that get blown so strong that overwhelming the escape velocity and out of earth's orbit, but may eventually got captive by the jupiter's orbit due to stronger gravitational pull. perhaps, some earth's impact debris is still trap inside the asteroid belt.


however, there is a bigger problem than the orbital motion of this planet-size impact theory. the moon's mineral rock that brought back from the apollo missions, upon comprehensive analysis of the isotope, didn't match the earth's mineral isotope. so there must be t further investigation before we can say this is the mainstream theory for the moon formation.

there are obviously other theories, like the twin objects formation that both moon and earth formed during the solar nebula.

then there is fission theory, captive theory, etc.. all of which fail to explain how the moon doesn't have iron core and how both earth and moon share similar composition and same amount of oxygen isotope.

therefore, currently the accepted theory is the impact theory because it answers the iron core, similar composition, and oxygen isotope puzzle.

good topic btw.

Sorry, but the proof (that it doesn't defy the laws of physics) is up there in the night sky ...
visible sometimes. It is called the moon.
Obviously your model of the world, space and the moon is off.
The real world defines what the laws of physics should be ...
Not the other way around.


For once, InitialDJay's explaination was very good.
It surprised me.

I've also taken physics. But I never got a good answer from my professors on this.

Lets suppose for the sack of argument, the early moon was ejected from a body colliding with the earth and both maintained stable orbits. Earth around the sun and moon around the earth. At this stage it is obvious that both are not nice round spheres, specially the moon - all physicist agree on this. It is over time as dust particles and asteroids collide with earth and moon that they grow round.

Since each collision, no matter how small or large, imparts mass and velocity to a body, How could such an accumulation of matter, enough to make the moon and earth round, not change the orbit? Achieving orbit is a tricky situation. It requires the perfect balance of,initial velocity, mass and angle relative to another body otherwise, the object will escape into space or fall back to earth. Achieving orbit for non controlled bodies is like throwing a coin and having it land on its edge. One could argue that since particles come from all directions equally, the net effect is zero in changing the moons orbit. BUT, such arguments do not take into consideration the moons rotation. The moon rotates in such a way as to always face the earth on one side. We always see the same face of the moon. So, all participles striking the moon have a clean shot on the far side but no particle can strike the moon on the near side since the earth is in the way. And yet the remains of asteroid collisions are plainly visible on the near side. Did the moons rotation suddenly change when earth developed its oceans? That would explain how impact to the near side of the moon could have occurred but having the moon slow down from the time earth developed its oceans is really a small amount of time considering earths age.

Maybe the peaces don't fit because the theory is wrong.
I've argued this with my professor and the answer I got is "we can't fully prove all the details concerning any theory until we get more data".

both moon and earth are not perfectly smooth and spherical because there are craters, mountains, and tidal force, which sometime, caused it to alter its shape a little bit.

however, at a distance, we can perfectly see it as spherical rounded-body.

and it's round because of the effect of its own center of gravity and the velocity massive objects spin.

i guess you talked about the bombardment period, where asteroids and comets colliding into earth and moon, which had many craters in the moon's geological surface.

remembered that objects (ie, planets) that closer to its primary body (ie, sun), the planets will orbit around the sun faster than body further away. hence, the effect of asteroid and comet impact doesn't change earth's orbit around the sun because of the effect of sun's gravity pulling it in the same elliptical orbit.

however, the effect of a secondary gravitational pull (like our moon's tidal force) can effect earth's axis of rotation. likewise, earth's gravitational force effects the moon's rotation.

furthermore earth and moon used to spin much faster than today, but because of the moon's own gravity, earth had been slowing down dramatically and moon's rotation also slowed down by earth's gravity.

so now, we have this 24hrs day on earth, instead of, lets say 48hrs day.

regrading why the moon predominantly showed one-side of its face to observers on earth, it's due to tidal locking.

as the moon is rotating, earth's tidal force squeezed and locked the saggy part of the moon surface because it's closer and has lower gravity, so the effect get pulled harder by earth.

therefore, whenever moon and earth rotate on its axis, earth's stronger gravitational pull created tide on moon causing one-side face to always face us.

just as the moon's creates tide on earth, like we see as tidal wave rises when one earth's hemisphere closer to the moon.

The early days when the moon and the earth were just forming ..
the earth and the moon were much hotter and pretty much in molten form
Being near liquid form, the natural shape would be a sphere.
Of course, due to certain gravitional effects, And also due to spin,
the earth bulges along the equator

The moon's orbit use to be much closer than it was today
Over time the moon has dragged on the earth's spin ..
slowing down the the rotation. Thus creating longer days.
The moon's orbit has also sped up. So, it is trying to fly away from the earth.
Every year the moon is moving away from the earth.
This can be checked by using lasers aimed at the set of mirrors the astronauts left on the moon.

Now, about the side facing the earth having impact crators, ...
That side hasn't always been facing the earth ...
but lets say it did (for argument) ... rocks, particles, meteors and etc could be headed for
the space between earth and the moon. When it traveled too close to the moon, its gravity pulled
it into crashing with the moon. Yes, I know the gravity is much less than the earth.
Still, the evidence is that there were impacts on this side and some were fairly huge.
The angles of impact are not known.

^wow avisitor, your getting smarter.

anyway, what simulator is he using? sounds like a good software to play with. lol